PYF Historical Fun Fact: (USER LOSETH POSTYNG PRIVILYGES FOR FOUR AND TWENTY HOURS)

The Something Awful Forums > Main > Post Your Favorite: Carefully Curated > PYF Historical Fun Fact: (USER LOSETH POSTYNG PRIVILYGES FOR FOUR AND TWENTY HOURS)

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Ghost Leviathan: Mar 2, 2017; Exploration is ill-advised.

Angry Salami posted:

Australia has the city of Townsville. It's not technically a tautology, being named after its founder, Robert Towns, but it doesn't stop it sounding stupid.

As far as anyone knows the Powerpuff Girls do not live there.

There's also a place called Mount Hill.

Also a suburb of Melbourne called Batman.

BrigadierSensible posted:

In unimaginative naming:

The Capital of South Korea, Seoul, (서울), just means "West City in Korean.

The Capital of Mainland China, Beijing, ( 北京) just means "North City" in Mandarin.

There's more than a couple of these type of names of cities in India in local languages as well.

So that's where Dragon Ball got it from!

# ? May 17, 2022 13:45

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# ? May 31, 2024 09:09

FreudianSlippers: Apr 12, 2010; Shooting and Fucking
are the same thing!

Goths Geats.

Tomato Tomatoe

# ? May 17, 2022 13:48

Edgar Allen Ho: Apr 3, 2017; by sebmojo

There's a Batman in turkish Kurdistan too.

# ? May 17, 2022 13:51

thepopmonster: Feb 18, 2014

Angry Salami posted:

Australia has the city of Townsville. It's not technically a tautology, being named after its founder, Robert Towns, but it doesn't stop it sounding stupid.

Melbourne, Australia could have been called Batmania if one of the financial backers, John Batman, had had his way.

There was, however, an electoral division called Batman from 1906-2019, so I'm fairly sure that somewhere in the parlimentary record there occur the words "The speaker recognises the Honorable Member for Batman".
It was renamed to Cooper in 2019 after Aboriginal community leader and activist William Cooper, which is a definite upgrade considering that Batman:

* Was so bad at stealing land that the Governer of a british colony said his treaty with the then-residents was invalid [1]
* Died at age 38 from complications of syphilis
* Was broke when he died.
* Saddled the city with the lamest motto ever - "Here is the place to build a village".

fake edits:
Batman is not a suburb, but there is a railway station called Batman, which serves the suburb of Coburg North. There is also a post office called Batman, and it has it's own postcode (zip), but that's only for PO Boxes as far as I can tell because the address for the actual post office is in Coburg North, right next to Fawkner, a suburb named after Batman's more successful rival.
John Batman is actually buried in Fawkner cemetary, which is some kind of schadenfreude.

[1]You don't have to give it to the guvnah: "Batman's treaty was almost immediately declared invalid by the Proclamation of Governor Bourke of New South Wales. On 6 August 1835, he declared the British Crown owned the entire land of Australia, and that only it could sell or distribute land."

# ? May 17, 2022 14:29

Mr. Sunshine: May 15, 2008; This is a scrunt that has been in space too long and become a Lunt (Long Scrunt); Fun Shoe

FreudianSlippers posted:

Goths Geats.

Tomato Tomatoe

The connection between the goths (as in the gothic tribes) and the g�tar (people from G�taland, the collection of kingdoms that joined with Svealand to form Sweden) is pretty loving tenuous. Attempts have been made to equate the two, and also with the goths and Gotland (the island in the baltic sea) during the national romantic period in the 19th century, because to swedish national romantics being the motherfuckers who absolutely wrecked the roman empire seemed pretty baller.

# ? May 17, 2022 14:44

Brawnfire: Jul 13, 2004; 🎧Listen to Cylindricule!🎵
https://linktr.ee/Cylindricule

hello yes i play g�tar

# ? May 17, 2022 16:47

TooMuchAbstraction: Oct 14, 2012; I spent four years making
Waves of Steel
Hell yes I'm going to turn my avatar into an ad for it.; Fun Shoe

Fantasy author Steven Brust had a bit in one of his novels that parodied Torpenhow Hill with Bengloarafurd Ford (NB the below is written by an in-universe author, who is incredibly pompous and paid by the word):

quote:

The Serioli, who departed the area to avoid any of the unfortunate incidents that war can produce, left only the name for the place, which was �Ben,� meaning �ford� in their language. The Easterners called the place �Ben Ford,� or, in the Eastern tongue, �Ben gazlo.�

After ten years of fierce battle, the Imperial Army won a great victory on the spot, driving the Easterners well back into the mountains. The Dragonlords who had found the place, then, began calling it �Bengazlo Ford.� The Dragons, wishing to waste as little time on speech as possible, shortened this to Benglo Ford, or, in the tongue of the Dragon, which was still in use at the time, �Benglo ara.� Eventually, over the course of the millennia, the tongue of the Dragon fell out of use, and the North-western language gained preeminence, which rendered the location Bengloara Ford, which was eventually shortened to Bengloarafurd. The river crossing became the Bengloarafurd Ford, which name it held until after the Interregnum when the river was dredged and the Bengloarafurd Bridge was built.

# ? May 17, 2022 18:11

Carbon dioxide: Oct 9, 2012

Ghost Leviathan posted:

Also a suburb of Melbourne called Batman.

There's a village in the Netherlands called Bathmen.

# ? May 17, 2022 18:25

FreudianSlippers: Apr 12, 2010; Shooting and Fucking
are the same thing!

There's a river in Iceland called Brúará or Bridge River, because of a natural stone arch that used to cross it in one spot, the modern bridge over the river is called Brúarábrú or Bridge River Bridge.

# ? May 17, 2022 19:13

Lewd Mangabey: Jun 2, 2011; "What sort of ape?" asked Stephen.
"A damned ill-conditioned sort of an ape. It had a can of ale at every pot-house on the road, and is reeling drunk. It has been offering itself to Babbington."

For everyone enjoying name etymology chat, allow me to recommend Names On the Land by George Stewart. It is a history of the giving of place names in the United States, starting from the earliest European exploration and going up through the 1940s, when the book was written. It is cleverly written and deals with the politics and changing fads behind naming.

# ? May 18, 2022 03:55

moonmazed: Dec 27, 2021; by VideoGames

thepopmonster posted:

* Was so bad at stealing land that the Governer of a british colony said his treaty with the then-residents was invalid

this is, frankly, impressive

# ? May 18, 2022 04:25

Platystemon: Feb 13, 2012; BREADS

TooMuchAbstraction posted:

Fantasy author Steven Brust had a bit in one of his novels that parodied Torpenhow Hill with Bengloarafurd Ford (NB the below is written by an in-universe author, who is incredibly pompous and paid by the word):

�Rufford Ford� makes me furious.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUYfTrXHK4U

# ? May 18, 2022 06:40

Imagined: Feb 2, 2007

This is not a "fun" fact, but I'm reading Max Hastings' 'Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy'. In that he quotes from 'The Sorrow of War', a historical novel by Vietnamese author Bao Ninh, who served in the Glorious 27th Youth Brigade during the war. It gave me chills:

Bao Ninh posted:

Kien knows the area well. It was here, at the end of the dry season of 1969, that his Battalion 27 was surrounded and almost totally wiped out. Ten men survived from the Unlucky Battalion, after fierce, horrible, barbarous fighting.

That was the dry season when the sun burned harshly, the wind blew fiercely, and the enemy sent napalm spraying through the jungle and a sea of fire enveloped them, spreading like the fires of hell. Troops in the fragmented companies tried to regroup, only to be blown out of their shelters again as they went mad, became disoriented and threw themselves into nets of bullets, dying in the flaming inferno. Above them the helicopters flew at tree-top height and shot them almost one by one, the blood spreading out, spraying from their backs, flowing like red mud.

The diamond-shaped grass clearing was piled high with bodies killed by helicopter gunships. Broken bodies, bodies blown apart, bodies vaporised.

No jungle grew again in this clearing. No grass. No plants.

‘Better to die than surrender my brothers! Better to die!’ the Battalion Commander yelled insanely; waving his pistol in front of Kien he blew his own brains out through his ear. Kien screamed soundlessly in his throat at the sight, as the Americans attacked with sub-machine-guns, sending bullets buzzing like deadly bees around him. Then Kien lowered his machine-gun, grasped his side and fell, rolling slowly down the bank of a shallow stream, hot blood trailing down the slope after him.

In the days that followed, crows and eagles darkened the sky. After the Americans withdrew, the rainy season came, flooding the jungle floor, turning the battlefield into a marsh whose surface water turned rust-coloured from the blood. Bloated human corpses, floating alongside the bodies of incinerated jungle animals, mixed with branches and trunks cut down by artillery, all drifting in a stinking marsh. When the flood receded everything dried in the heat of the sun into thick mud and stinking rotting meat. And down the bank and along the stream Kien dragged himself, bleeding from the mouth and from his body wound. The blood was cold and sticky, like blood from a corpse. Snakes and centipedes crawled over him, and he felt Death’s hand on him. After that battle no one mentioned Battalion 27 any more, though numerous souls of ghosts and devils were born in that deadly defeat. They were still loose, wandering in every corner and bush in the jungle, drifting along the stream, refusing to depart for the Other World.

From then on it was called the Jungle of Screaming Souls. Just hearing the name whispered was enough to send chills down the spine. Perhaps the screaming souls gathered together on special festival days as members of the Lost Battalion, lining up on the little diamond-shaped grass plot, checking their ranks and numbers. The sobbing whispers were heard deep in the jungle at night, the howls carried on the wind. Perhaps they really were the voices of the wandering souls of dead soldiers.

Kien was told that passing this area at night one could hear birds crying like human beings. They never flew, they only cried among the branches. And nowhere else in these Central Highlands could one find bamboo shoots of such a horrible colour, with infected weals like bleeding pieces of meat. As for the fireflies, they were huge. Some said they’d seen firefly lights rise before them as big as a steel helmet – some said bigger than helmets.

Here, when it is dark, trees and plants moan in awful harmony. When the ghostly music begins it unhinges the soul and the entire wood looks the same no matter where you are standing. Not a place for the timid. Living here one could go mad or be frightened to death. Which was why in the rainy season of 1974, when the regiment was sent back to this area, Kien and his scout squad established an altar and prayed before it in secret, honouring and recalling the wandering souls from Battalion 27 still in the Jungle of Screaming Souls.

Sparkling incense sticks glowed night and day at the altar from that day forward.

# ? May 18, 2022 20:24

Proteus Jones: Feb 28, 2013

Ellie Trashcakes posted:

It certainly doesn't mean "landing strips for gay Martians"

Because those don't exist

You know what, Ellie, I like you. You're not like the other people here, in the trailer park.

# ? May 18, 2022 20:34

ThisIsJohnWayne: Feb 23, 2007; Ooo! Look at me! NO DON'T LOOK AT ME!

Imagined posted:

This is not a "fun" fact, but I'm reading Max Hastings' 'Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy'. In that he quotes from 'The Sorrow of War', a historical novel by Vietnamese author Bao Ninh, who served in the Glorious 27th Youth Brigade during the war. It gave me chills:

And when the crying dead pass us by,
Will you let them be
Or their tears dry?
Will you comfort them
before the last goodbye

# ? May 18, 2022 20:53

Falukorv: Jun 23, 2013; A funny little mouse!

Porto is otherwise a pretty unimaginitive name for a city although was originally longer (Portus Cale =port of the galicians i think). The Douro river that has its mouth in Porto is supposedly named after celtic word for "water".

Cartagena in Spain has a couple of redundancies too, from Cartago Nova/New Carthage. Carthage itself means something like "New City".

Falukorv has a new favorite as of 03:57 on May 21, 2022

# ? May 21, 2022 03:53

BattyKiara: Mar 17, 2009

If you are doing silly Australian names, you cannot skip this one, population 3;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tittybong,_Victoria

# ? May 21, 2022 17:01

Trabant: Nov 26, 2011; All systems nominal.

lol

"Victoria"

# ? May 21, 2022 21:09

Detective Thompson: Nov 9, 2007; Sammy Davis Jr. Jr. is also in repose.

Carbon dioxide posted:

There's a village in the Netherlands called Bathmen.

Any Turkish folks happen to live there?

# ? May 21, 2022 21:45

Edgar Allen Ho: Apr 3, 2017; by sebmojo

normal colonization: ah yes, prince fucko's land, sainted land of saint problematic, uh this one can be named after a dutch merchant, this next bit we'll bastardize off a local name or invent one

australia colonization: er, north, south, west, the queen, the queen again, Wales! No, no, south Wales

# ? May 21, 2022 22:24

Ichabod Sexbeast: Dec 5, 2011; Giving 'em the old razzle-dazzle

Edgar Allen Ho posted:

normal colonization: ah yes, prince fucko's land, sainted land of saint problematic, uh this one can be named after a dutch merchant, this next bit we'll bastardize off a local name or invent one

australia colonization: er, north, south, west, the queen, the queen again, Wales! No, no, south Wales

They did squeeze in one dutch merchant name, for old time's sake

# ? May 22, 2022 05:55

Zeniel: Oct 18, 2013

Plus the previous list aptly described everything else named in australia

# ? May 22, 2022 13:18

ChubbyChecker: Mar 25, 2018

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYQb3FtJfm0

# ? May 22, 2022 13:40

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Got nothing on the strip of the Mississippi basin/midwest that is Egypt but pronounced wrong.

# ? May 22, 2022 13:51

Peanut President: Nov 5, 2008; by Athanatos

zedprime posted:

Got nothing on the strip of the Mississippi basin/midwest that is Egypt but pronounced wrong.

you mean it's not supposed to be pronounced Care-Oh?

# ? May 24, 2022 21:39

Brawnfire: Jul 13, 2004; 🎧Listen to Cylindricule!🎵
https://linktr.ee/Cylindricule

Is that the area referenced in American Gods?

# ? May 24, 2022 21:43

christmas boots: Oct 15, 2012; To these sing-alongs 🎤of siren 🧜🏻‍♀️songs
To oohs😮 to ahhs😱 to 👏big👏applause👏
With all of my 😡anger I scream🤬 and shout📢
🇺🇸America🦅, I love you 🥰but you're freaking 💦me 😳out; Biscuit Hider

zedprime posted:

Got nothing on the strip of the Mississippi basin/midwest that is Egypt but pronounced wrong.

There's a proud American tradition of naming things the same as other countries but pronouncing them wrong.

Versailles, for example.

# ? May 24, 2022 23:09

TooMuchAbstraction: Oct 14, 2012; I spent four years making
Waves of Steel
Hell yes I'm going to turn my avatar into an ad for it.; Fun Shoe

There's a Milan in Michigan pronounced "Mai-lan".

# ? May 24, 2022 23:21

Milo and POTUS: Sep 3, 2017; I will not shut up about the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. I talk about them all the time and work them into every conversation I have. I built a shrine in my room for the yellow one who died because sadly no one noticed because she died around 9/11. Wanna see it?

Brawnfire posted:

Is that the area referenced in American Gods?

The very same. It's up the river from memphis!

# ? May 24, 2022 23:34

Peanut President: Nov 5, 2008; by Athanatos

the mississippi is the nile of america and thus we have named its cities after the great cities of egypt such as Memphis, Cairo, and Caruthersville

# ? May 24, 2022 23:45

Soul Dentist: Mar 17, 2009

American Gods introduced me to the House on the Rock, which is the best road trip spot I've ever been to. A truly mindboggling collection of collections

# ? May 24, 2022 23:54

Milo and POTUS: Sep 3, 2017; I will not shut up about the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. I talk about them all the time and work them into every conversation I have. I built a shrine in my room for the yellow one who died because sadly no one noticed because she died around 9/11. Wanna see it?

There's also a thebes that's just upriver from Cairo

# ? May 25, 2022 00:15

Brawnfire: Jul 13, 2004; 🎧Listen to Cylindricule!🎵
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Soul Dentist posted:

American Gods introduced me to the House on the Rock, which is the best road trip spot I've ever been to. A truly mindboggling collection of collections

I've desired to go there so badly since I read that book. It sounds like a real head trip.

# ? May 25, 2022 00:20

Edgar Allen Ho: Apr 3, 2017; by sebmojo

Brawnfire posted:

I've desired to go there so badly since I read that book. It sounds like a real head trip.

Saaaame. I try to re�ind myself there's no way it could be as crazy as the book, but it doesn't help.

# ? May 25, 2022 00:24

Soul Dentist: Mar 17, 2009

The book actually doesn't do it justice. To just walk through it takes hours. I cannot overstate how cool it is!

# ? May 25, 2022 00:35

3D Megadoodoo: Nov 25, 2010

Milo and POTUS posted:

There's also a thebes that's just upriver from Cairo

There's a Port Athur here. Everyone calls it Portsa for short. (It's not near the port. There's no Arthur.)

# ? May 25, 2022 00:52

Edgar Allen Ho: Apr 3, 2017; by sebmojo

Slightly less weird than Nyu-York, Donyetskaya Oblast (previously renamed Novgorodskoye and the inhabitants voted that no, they liked being New York)

Edgar Allen Ho has a new favorite as of 01:12 on May 25, 2022

# ? May 25, 2022 01:10

Silly Newbie: Jul 25, 2007; How do I?

Edgar Allen Ho posted:

Saaaame. I try to reùind myself there's no way it could be as crazy as the book, but it doesn't help.

Out of curiosity, how did you make this typo?

# ? May 25, 2022 02:58

Edgar Allen Ho: Apr 3, 2017; by sebmojo

M and � on french azerty are where ; and ' are on an anglo qwerty keyboard

That plus cubital tunnel.

# ? May 25, 2022 03:14

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# ? May 31, 2024 09:09

Biplane: Jul 18, 2005

Edgar Allen Ho posted:

M and ù on french azerty are where ; and ' are on an anglo qwerty keyboard

That plus cubital tunnel.

I'll allow it.

# ? May 25, 2022 11:32

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